The To-Do List

Well it’s been a few days since I last posted, I know, I know. What with Sweetie being out of town this past weekend and the calendar being all stuffed full, there just hasn’t been all that much time to write. Not that there hasn’t been things to talk about. Both boys had their first ride on a pony, I got in an argument with another parent dropping the older boy off at school after she had a fit that I had parked to close to her car. The older boy got to hold his new cousin and we all got a good meal out of the deal. Met with Colin Saturday morning and got the artwork back (finally!) for the Prairie Dogs upcoming CD, Brand New Heart, It looks GREAT, now I just need to find out how to pay to get them made up. Started working on a switch-activated Lazy-Susan for Ike so he can sit and spin himself in his chair. Called the paramedics to come and rescue my mom after she fell off the last step leaving the trailer Sunday morning. We all wound up in the emergency room commiserating over her broken ankle and catching snippets of the Seahawks loss to Cincinnati. Picked Sweetie up from the airport Sunday night after her four day stay in Indiana came to an end. Ike goes into the hospital this morning where they will glue wires to his head for a video EEG and if all goes well, should be allowed to leave twenty-four hours later. However, he goes back into the hospital next Monday and gets the huge bump that has grown above his left eye removed, and his G-tube replaced. The older boy’s school changed the days of the parent conferences to THIS week and that means half days, so there will be much running around trying to juggle work, Ike, early dismissal, Hospitals, carpentry, getting a wheelchair for mom, and in the end, still trying to still find something decent to eat for dinner.

But I haven’t found the one funny story I want to tell. It’s like I’m still not far enough removed from all the crazy running around I did over the past five days. And though setting the clocks back seems to have helped me get to sleep earlier, I haven’t been sleeping all that well the past few nights. I seem to have a lot on my mind but not in clear and concise ways that lend themselves to little stories to tell.

Fortunately with Ike going into the hospital I will have, if not a good story, at least a bitching point from which to jump off in the next update.

Saturday is the older boy’s sixth birthday party. Monday is the actual day, but as I said, we’re in the hospital that day so it had to be moved.

So there are so many things going on right now, I’m having trouble staying focused. Also coming up:

I need to get a birthday present.

Bake a pie for a school harvest festival.

Carve Pumpkins

Get Ike’s haircut before he goes in to the hospital.

Meet with Lawyers.

Meet with state representatives.

Meet with the Parent Coalition.

But you know, that’s just a to-do list…I’ll see if I can’t find a way to make a story out of something here in the near future so I don’t have to bore you all with the details.

The Pumpkin Patch

Last Saturday we packed up the boys and headed out to a pumpkin patch. Every year we set out in the same basic direction; I-5 to River Road and then head east. This year we found a farm with a corn maze, and due to some unexplained planning on our part we managed to bring Ike’s jogging stroller along with us. It was raining pretty hard when we pulled up, and along that long stretch of road we were the only car I could see for miles. The woman at the stand seemed genuinely shocked that we had decided to brave the rains this early in October just for a few pumpkins, but Saturday was the only day this past weekend that Sweetie didn’t have to work, and since next weekend we were all going to the Seahawks game and the weekend after that Ike is back in the hospital for a bit and then it's Halloween, well I guess it just seemed like either we go now or wind up getting them mid week at some grocery store somewhere.

The corn maze was fun. They turned it into a scavenger hunt of sorts; find all four poker chips and get a free pumpkin. The older boy running just ahead, darting in and out, back and forth like an over excited puppy. Ike laughing hard, as he always does at the young boy who he thinks is the funniest brother a kid could ever have. Sweetie and myself taking up the rear, under the rain and over the mud.

After the maze, it was pumpkin searching time. I found one that reminded me of Ron Tonkin, a person from my past that I find myself obsessed with from time to time. Sweetie, who was seeing pumpkins metaphorically, picked a small one that she deemed unfit to fend for itself in the harsh damp environment of this Puyallup Valley Serengeti.

It takes the older boy longer to find his. He is not afraid of the rain or the wind, the cold or mud. He waits and wanders as long as it takes before he finally finds the one he wants, until the size and the color and the shape are exactly right. Earlier he had hidden a small green one for his cousin on the off chance that he might come to the very same pumpkin patch as us, looking for hidden green pumpkins a thoughtful cousin might have left as a gift.

But before we leave, he changes his mind and decides we should just get his cousins pumpkin now and deliver it to him as soon as we can. He runs back across the field and under a carefully stacked pile of orange, produces a dark green one the size of a grapefruit.

After we leave the pumpkin stand, where we get a flat full of what I’m sure will be the last raspberries of the season, we load up into the van and head back home. Along the banks of the river stand fishermen in their hip waders, angling for the last few catches of the year, before the river swells and muddies, and the current runs to fast.

Time

Has it really been more than a week since I last posted? Where do the days go?

More than a month since I last played music with the boys.

Two weeks since I got back on the diet.

One week since I broke that diet on homemade deserts at a birthday party.

Four days since I got back on the diet once again.

Two days since the rain began.

One day since I cleaned.

Twelve hours since I went to bed.

Six hours since the youngest woke up with a leaky diaper.

Three hours since I woke up again.

One and a half hours since I brought Ike’s stroller home after it had been left in the work car.

Fourty-five minutes since my last cup of coffee.

Twenty-two minutes since I used the bathroom.

Eleven minutes since I started this update.

Five and a half minutes since I wrote “the rain began”.

Two minutes forty-five seconds since I had a sip of water.

One minute twenty two seconds since I paused to think.

Forty-one seconds since I ran out of ideas.

Twenty seconds to write this line and think of the next one.

Ten seconds to be done with the whole thing.

Five to read the last line.

Two, to pause

One to glance

…I’m living in the now.